Victory Marks Second Major Jury Award This Year Against Johnson & Johnson's DePuy Implant

NEW YORK, Dec. 1, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Simmons Hanly Conroy, one of the nation's largest mass torts firms, is pleased to announce that six plaintiffs have won a staggering $1 billionTexas federal jury verdict in the third bellwether trial involving the faulty DePuy Pinnacle metal-on-metal hip replacement devices manufactured by Johnson & Johnson (J&J). The jurors deliberated for less than a day.

The plaintiffs convinced the jury in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas Dallas Division that J&J sidestepped standard regulatory review and misled doctors to believe that the design of the market-leading DePuy Pinnacle device was safe. The jury awarded more than $1 billion punitive damages and nearly $40 million compensatory damages to the 6 patients who required "revision surgeries" following implant of the faulty artificial hip systems, which have not been recalled.

"This is a significant victory for the plaintiffs, who have suffered major injuries caused by these devices," said Jayne Conroy, a shareholder at Simmons Hanly Conroy and co-counsel for the plaintiffs as a member of the Plaintiffs' Executive Committee for the DePuy Pinnacle multidistrict litigation (MDL).

One of the key findings in the plaintiffs' successful case was evidence that J&J promoted the DePuy device aggressively, including through kickback payments to surgeons, even though the company knew the device was riskier than alternative devices. Also, DuPuy was able to sell a particular version of the Pinnacle hip system - the Ultamet variety, which had a metal socket liner instead of a polyethylene or ceramic liner - without significant testing because it was similar to a variety that predated 1976 regulations mandating premarket review. According to the plaintiffs' case, the success rate for the DePuy Pinnacle metal-on-metal implants was only 53 percent after 11 years.